Childhood and Early Career
Bill Scott was born in Bundaberg, Queensland and grew up in Caboolture and Brisbane. He began writing poetry while serving in the Royal Australian Navy during World War II, and had his first poem published in The Bulletin in 1944 when he was twenty-one.
After the war he traveled around Queensland working as a sugar cane cutter, umbrella maker, steam engine driver, and gold-prospector. He was also a worker in the smelters of Mount Isa, and a seaman on a lighthouse tender in the 1950s before working at a publishing house.
Starting in 1974 he wrote full-time. In 1976 he compiled The Complete Book of Australian Folklore, a book that has been in print almost continuously ever since. He also edited and compiled "The Second Penguin Australian Songbook". Scott completed 51 books of prose and poetry, and is renowned as a collector and writer of Australian folk stories and songs. He also wrote novels, short stories, verse, biographies, magazine articles, anthologies and songs, with some of his poetry and short stories anthologised in various collections.
Late in life he moved from Brisbane to Warwick in the Darling Downs, where he spent his last 18 years of life. He wrote long letters "full of stories, news, ideas and weather reports from his beloved Condamine River". He shared little gifts, tapes, books and even a rock of smoky quartz from the Snowy Mountains, as a reminder of his prospecting days, with friends.
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